Cheung Chau is a beautiful, fascinating South China Sea island, in western Hong Kong.
長洲，它是一個美麗、迷人的小島，位於香港的西南面。

It's easily reached from Hong Kong's main business district - fast ferries take just half an hour - yet seems a world away from the skyscrapers and the bustling streets and the traffic. Here on CheungChauHK, you'll find info on touring Cheung Chau, and life on the island. If you join - it's free! - you can comment on articles, post in forum discussions, even add photos to your very own album in the gallery.

Look up during daytime, and you are sure to soon see Black Kites circling overhead, on the lookout for fish in the harbour or near the beach. Cheung Chau is one of Hong Kong’s best places for nesting Black Kites, with perhaps five or more pairs. Swallows are also common breeding birds here, with nests often under low ceilings just outside shops and houses.

Along Cheung Chau Praya, towards Sai Wan, a housing development is taking shape. Not just any development - this is on land bought in 2007 for a whopping HK$96.5 million by Cheuk Nan (Holdings) Ltd, the chairman of which is Cecil Chao Sze-tsung - who has been described as "extraordinary Casanova, socialite and businessman". Mr Chao has said his company would turn the site into "paradise" - and change the surroundings.

As yet, doesn't look too much like what many people might consider "paradise", but work is ongoing.

Now my son is two, he's rather heavy for lugging about in backpack carrier. Easier to take the pushcair, for carrying him when tired - or when dawdling too much. This, though, means trying to avoid flights of steps. Just took him for outing in southern Cheung Chau, following good route along trails that are mostly concrete, with maybe only a handful of steps in all. Maybe useful if you, too, have toddler with pushchair - or just dislike steps!

This route starts with walk to southwest Cheung Chau, then heads east, along the "spine" if the southern chunk of the island, to the southeast, and the main beach. Takes maybe two to three hours.

Southeast Cheung Chau boasts paths that wind around headlands and curl up and over hillsides, passing through woodland, and near to naturally sculpted giant boulders, once grand but now ruined houses, a couple of temples, a tiny nunnery, and cliffs dropping to the sea. The main trail here is rather fancifully named the Mini Great Wall, but you can find other less known yet still fascinating paths to explore.

The Cheung Chau Bun Festival is a kind of Jiao Festival - a festival that a village might hold every year or every few years. More specifically, it's a Tai Ping Qing Jiao [literal meaning: "the Purest Sacrifice celebrated for Great Peace"]. Such festivals were perhaps widespread across south China, but under Mao were regarded as feudal superstition, and were suppressed in mainland China.

So this is where it all began, the launding point for the career of Hong Kong's gold medal winning Olympian, Lee Lai-shan (San San): The Cheung Chau Windsurfing Centre. Set on a tiny headland between Cheung Chau's two main beaches, the centre commands fine views of the island, and eastwards to Lamma and Hong Kong Island.

Today is the climax of the Bun Festival, the annual blend of carnival and exorcism rituals, which marks the birthday of the island's leading god, Pak Tei ("Northern King"). At the festival site, in front of the Pak Tei temple, stalls are set out with the paraphernalia of Chinese religious ceremonies.

There is little written history regarding Cheung Chau before the 18th century. But even early last century, some islanders said their families had settled on Cheung Chau hundreds of years ago, and we can guess something regarding the very early history based on some archaeological finds and the history of south China.